On January 14th Canadian sweetheart Rachel Wilson was by Valhalla and signed her Canadian Culture Thing MapleLeafForever stamp (CCT0106)! She was accompanied by her bombshell friend Bomb Girls’ Ali Liebert (upcoming MapleLeafForever stamp inductee).
Ottawa-born Rachel seems to have been in at least one episode of every show produced between 1994 and the present, as well as having a starring role in an impressive 7 series’. She has also been in such major films like Mystery Alaska, the Glass House and Saw 3D.
But at the core, Rachel might hold a everlasting soft-spot in the hearts of the many fans of Breaker High, the cutting-edge drama of life on a high-school cruise ship…you heard me. Rachel co-starred with Ryan Gosling (upcoming MapleLeafForever stamp inductee) as socially-awkward teenagers trying to make their way in a complicated nineties-high-school-cruise-ship world. Laugh all you want at the premise but remember that Joss Whedon’s Firefly barely aired 11 of it’s 14 episodes before being flatly cancelled while Breaker High boasts a whopping 44 episodes. Disney even set sail on this premise again more than ten years later and managed to produce 4 seasons of another ship-school in the Suite Life on Deck. All of us 40-somethings still remember Square Pegs and it only aired 20 grody-to-the-max episodes.
One on my personal favourite roles was a short film Rachel did in 2009, 75 El Camino. 75 El Camino tells the story of a couple trying to make their way in a complicated lost-my-job-lost-my-house-got-a-case-of-the-cancer story of life, death and El Caminos. Rachel plays the ray of sunshine in her parents struggle while the audience wrestles with the philosophical question: Is it a car? Is it a truck?
75 El Camino – Short Film – Directed by Sami Khan from Kevin C. W. Wong on Vimeo.
Rachel has since starred on racey comedies like Show Me Yours with fellow MapleLeafForever stamp inductee Alberta Watson as well as the religious docu-drama My Pal Satan, historical bio-series the Kennedys and the animated-character Heather on Total Drama Island.
Rachel Wilson has spent the past four years co-starring as fiery Dr. Nikki Renholds on the CBC’s acclaimed Republic of Doyle series.